ringersol:Even a viewing is pretty weird and creepy.No-one's coming to terms with a death that means anything to them in 20 seconds in front of a casket or even a few hours in the same room as a corpse.

So unless you're gonna weekend-at-bernie's them on a pub crawl, just get the cremation over with and hold the party at someone's house.

/ fark funeral homes

I'm old enough to have participated in a "settin' up with the dead" which was an old Southern custom. In the old days people would sit with a corpse for a 24-hr period to be sure they were not in what we now know as a deep coma. I thought this was going to be mega creepy until the womenfolk went to bed leaving the men in the parlor with the stiff. Within five minutes the whiskey and the poker cards appeared, and we had a pretty good all-nighter. During that period I had my first sip of liquor, heard my Dad tell a couple good dirty jokes, witnessed my Granddad accuse the dead man of still owing him $100, and generally had an introduction to a man's world.

But, yeah, fark funeral homes. Here in NC the funeral industry has passed so many regulations that the cost of a cremation is now almost the same as a damned funeral. When my brother died in '99, the cost was $500. When my Dad passed away in 2009, that cost had risen to $1,500 plus we had to haul the body to Raleigh since they had forced the closure of many of the small-town crematoriums. And, of course, there's now a regulation to haul bodies so we had to pay an ambulance service for the ride - another $300.

I left strict instructions for the cheapest cremation possible, plus toss my ashes in the ocean. I also left cash for a couple kegs and a couple cases of liquor. I want people to have a good time at my service, no weeping and wailing.

When my mother passed away (after a long struggle with Alzheimer's) I met with a funeral home to arrange her cremation (she was to be placed with my father in a Vet's cemetery). The guy was nice, but certainly pushed buying unnecessary stuff (like a fancy casket - just to burn it, really?). After a few minutes of this I just turned to him and said "Look, I just lost my mother, who I lost mentally a long time ago, I currently have the flu so I'm about to simultaneously throw up on, and pass out in, your office. Believe me when I say that I'm in no mood whatsoever to fark around with you trying to meet your monthly sales quota. Cardboard box, Vet's cemetery, and we're done here." The arrangements only took about 5 minutes after that.

Google your state and "anatomical gift association." There are all kinds of neat things you can do with your body after you're gone:

• Give it to medical schools so students can learn how we work• Give it to your state crime lab, so they can chuck it out in a field and watch it decompose, improving their ability to figure out times of death in homicide cases.• You can be used in tests of new surgical techniques.• You might get really lucky and have your skeleton reassembled and hung up in a classroom somewhere.• If you're really lucky, you might even get purchased by an artist, plastinated, and go on tour in one of those "Body Worlds" exhibits. (It helps if you're a Chinese prisoner, though.)

That's cool stuff, and it beats just rotting away in the ground or being turned into cat littler.